Candidate's charisma may point to electoral triumph: study

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2006

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Listening to candidates debate may not be the best way of guessing who will win an election. A study by two US universities found that people were better at predicting election winners solely on the candidates' appearance rather than hearing what they have to say. "We found that snap decisions based on charisma are a good predictor of election outcomes," research co-author Daniel Benjamin of Dartmouth College said in a statement.

Moreover, co-author Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago said: "Hearing what they say make you worse at predicting." The study used 10-second long silent video clip extracts of debates from 58 gubernatorial elections between 1988 and 2002. Some 264 subjects participated in the study. The video clips did not give the...